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Quick Guide: Focusing Your Site on Metrics that Matter

Discover the most important website metrics and learn how to adapt your marketing operations and KPIs around improving those key metrics.

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9

Chapters

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

Driving Sales Through Your Website

Chapter 3

Focus on Your ICP

Chapter 4

Build Unique Buying Experiences

Chapter 5

Experience Matters More Than Ever

Chapter 6

Building a Buyer-Based Website​

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

Today’s data-driven marketer tends to measure everything – whether meaningful or not.

From cost per impression (CPM) and share of voice (SOV), to cost per click (CPC), and click-through rate (CTR), if it’s got a three letter acronym, we’re tracking it.

The frustrating part? Most of these metrics were dreamt up by marketing platforms. We’re chasing a version of success defined by their tech, not what our business needs.

These metrics might be driving traffic to your website, or maybe creating MQLs, but do either deliver on the goals your business really cares about?

Here’s how you can ensure your main digital real estate — your website — is focused on the things that matter:prospects, pipeline, and revenue.

Chapter 2

Your Website is Your Biggest Sales Channel

Driving Sales Through Your Website

By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Being responsible for your website is a big deal. You’re not just the gatekeeper to your company’s brand – you’re the gatekeeper to its revenue.

So let’s forget about vanity metrics and get back to the important questions for any digital marketer measuring your efforts:

  • What are you trying to accomplish?
  • Which accounts do you want to reach?
  • Did anyone who clicked/liked/shared your content actually engage with your brand?
  • What, if any, was the impact on pipeline and revenue?

The answers to these questions will shift your focus from how the average visitor uses your website and instead focus closely at how your website serves buyers.

Chapter 3

Focus on Your ICP

It all starts with knowing WHO you want to target.

Which businesses are most likely to buy from you? Which accounts are more likely to create revenue? These are the people you want to drive to your site. This isn’t ABM – it’s just good marketing. Once you focus on your ICP accounts, your marketing is naturally more relevant.

Maintain this focus. Traffic alone is meaningless – it’s about engagement with the right people, in the right accounts. Tracking web activity from your ICP will give you the true value of your activities.

Chapter 4

Build Your Experiences Around the Buyer Journey

At its heart, your website should help your ideal accounts progress along their buying journey.

Gartner’s research shows these buyers usually have to complete six distinct jobs to successfully complete a purchase. And most B2B buyers will revisit nearly every buying job at least once before they make a purchase.

The result is a customer buying journey that resembles more of a maze than a linear path.

Download a PDF of this chart here.

As prospects enter different stages of their buying journey, their needs change. You should create content that is specific to each stage.

Your website becomes indispensable when you provide valuable information, at the right time, for every part of the buying job.

Chapter 5

Experience Matters More Than Ever

You know who you want to target, and how you can move them along the buyer journey. But there’s a final piece missing – the user experience.

Eighty Percent of customers say the experiences provided by a company are as important as its products and services. With digital channels set to dominate the selling experience, your website experience must be first-class.

A static website that speaks to the broadest-possible audience is an engagement killer. Use account insights and data to provide a personalized digital experience. You can generate revenue breakthroughs by aligning messages and content with your prospect’s interests and buying stage.

We’ve tried this approach, and it works. In the past, our website chatbot would jump the gun and immediately ask visitors to book a meeting with us. Not cool, chatbot. Now we use our knowledge of which topics people are interested in (based on first and third party intent) and where they are in the buying journey. We use this info to help visitors progress through their buying journey… or point them to a resource that will help them with a buying job.

In just 30 days of using this approach, we saw a 118% increase in conversions.

Chapter 6

Building a Buyer-Based Website

5 Steps to Building a Better Website

Let’s finish with some action points. Here are five ways to build a better buyer-focused website that to more revenue.

Understand Buyer Intent

What stage is your prospect in the buyer journey? What are they interested in? Understanding buyer intentallows you to shape a digital experience strategy based on the buyer’s priorities, not guesswork.

Measure Engagement

It may seem like another vanity metric, but it’s not. Engagement is everything. It’s vital to understand which of your ideal accounts are engaging with your brand, which are increasing engagement, and which personas across the buying team are engaged (and which aren’t).

Focus on Experience

Eighty-two percent of business buyers want the same experience they get when they make consumer purchases. They expect friction-free, meaningful experiences at every single touch point. Otherwise, they’ll simply move on to the next result in their search. Stand out in a sea of mediocre B2B websites by offering buyers tailored experiences.

Develop Content and Tools

Develop content to help your future customers complete essential buying jobs. Create content for every stage of the buyer journey, not just at the top of the funnel. This means calculators, comparison guides, and industry benchmarks. Arm prospects with all the info they need to complete their journey.

Bring People Along for the Journey

Revenue teams work better together. Part of your job is rallying the team and communicating your vision. Get the buyer’s broader marketing and sales team on board so you can banish vanity metrics for good and focus on generating the stuff that matters – pipeline and revenue.

For more tactics on how to improve your website conversions watch our on-demand webinar, ‘Why 97% of traffic is going to waste… and how to fix it’.

Ready to see 6sense in action?

The 6sense Team

The 6sense Team